Centre for Romanian Studies

Romanian Foreign Affairs (I): Rebecca WEST and Antoine BIBESCO

Rebecca West - a rapturous affair with Prince Antoine Bibesco

Dame Rebecca WEST (1892-1983) Anglo-Irish journalist, author, travel writer and literary critic. Her commitment to feminism and liberal principles made her one of the 20th century foremost women writers. She wrote  regularly  for the New Yorker. Her coverage of the Nuremberg Trials, her book on Yugoslav history Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, or The New Meaning of Treason, a study of World War II and Communist traitors represent some of her significant contributions to British literature.

In one of her classic quips West said:

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that sometimes one needs help with moving the piano.

One such ‘need’ of ‘male sex’ caused West more than just  ‘move her piano’-  it left her with an indelible experience it unhinged the foundations of her feminism and caused her to seek urgent help from a  shrink, as related by her biographer Victoria Glendinning:

In Paris, on her way home, she had a brief affair with Prince Antoine Bibesco (who wore black crepe de chine in bed), a Romanian diplomat married to Elizabeth Asquith, daughter of the Liberal leader. In the 1930s she was to lunch at the French embassy in London and find that the principal guest was Elizabeth Bibesco and  that every other woman guest was a former mistress of Antoine Bibesco: ‘I suppose some Attache’s little joke’. She was to remember her own affair as ‘rapturous’ but at its close felt that some blight still affected her personal life. The evidence suggests that Bibesco’s sophisticated sex inventiveness frightened Rebecca and that  she interpreted it as a further manifestation of male hostility and aggression and she continued in analysis when she returned to London this time with Silvia Payne another early Freudian. Nevertheless the elation of her first days with Bibesco coloured the writing of  ‘The Strange Necessity’ in which her meditations on art and literature are embedded in an account of a ‘sun gilded autumn day’ wandering through a magically illuminated Paris.

(“Rebecca West – A Life”, by Victoria Glendinning, op cit 121, Fawcet Columbine, New York, 1987)

Rebecca West; "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" - whilst writing this book she met again Prince Bibesco in Belgrade but was anxious not to include this passage in her book

Although Rebecca West felt that her Romanian affair did sufficient damage to her psyche by compelling her to recourse to the services of a psychoanalyst,  soon after she discarded  her misgivings in order to have a ‘second helping’,  this time in Belgrade, as she consumed a further tryst with –  Antoine Bibesco. On this occasion she was writing her classic opus ‘Black Lamb and Grey Falcon‘, although this time discretion dictated that nothing untoward transpired in her book about her ‘boudoir athlete’…

Prince Antoine BIBESCO - left an indelible impression on Rebecca WEST

Prince Antoine BIBESCO (1878-1951) He was a patron of the arts and in particular of Vuillard, Bonnard, and Marcel Proust, a diplomat in St Petersburg, London, Madrid and Washington DC, a polymath and society rake with an appetite for seduction. He was the grandson of  George Bibescu (1804-1873), ruling Prince of Wallachia and a son-in-law of British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.